When Ken Stabler died in July, many people shared their opinion that the longtime Raiders quarterback should be in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Stabler’s name will be up for consideration next year after the Hall’s Seniors Committee named him as one of their two nominees for selection in 2016. The committee considers players whose careers have been over for at least 25 years and their selections become finalists for the full voting body on the Saturday before the Super Bowl, when they and all other finalists must receive 80 percent of the vote for entry into Canton.

The other nominee is Dick Stanfel, who played guard for the Lions and Redskins in the 1950s. Stanfel, who died in June, was named to the All-Decade team for the 1950s and won two NFL Championships in Detroit before moving on to a coaching career that earned him a Super Bowl ring as the offensive line coach for the 1985 Bears.

Stanfel has been nominated by the Seniors Committee twice in the past without receiving the necessary votes for election. Stabler was a finalist on the regular ballot three times without being elected.

Stanfel has legitimate credentials, but Jerry Kramer’s are so much better that it would be laughable if it wasn’t so awful. Kramer’s absence is a continuing black eye for the HoF, one they show no desire to fix.

When Stabler gets in, there should be a public humiliation for Peter King and Dr. Z for blocking his election for all of this time. A prime-time special explaining why they are such jerks would not be too much….

They need to change the system to put fewer first year and recent players in and more of the past generations players that deserve induction but are overlooked for the flashy new players that the internet kiddies know.

Players like Ken Stabler, Harold Carmichael and so many more, deserve to be in NOW, more than some of the ‘new kids’. Put them in before they die, not after.

Posthumous awards…. Missed both targets by a couple years. Would have been nice for both these guys to be recognized while THEY could appreciate it. Seems like a hollow afterthought in regards to their respective families

The HOF is a sham for players that played at the start of the Super Bowl era. Most of the “voters” were unaware of what it took to play in the NFL in those days, now they are a bunch of angry old farts, with an axe to grind because their team lost when they were younger and they will not vote for the guys that beat their teams. Oh, and if the player didn’t play in the northeast or mid west in those days, you can forget about getting in the HOF.
Sidenote, why the hell is Dan Dierdorf in anyway?

Bronco fan here. I don’t think Snake had the quite the numbers to deserve the HOF but personally, glad to see it! Stabler was an absolute original, the poster boy of the Raiders and a player you never could take your eyes off of. There will never be another.

If he makes the Hall, shame on them for waiting until he was dead to bestow the honor!!!!!!!!!

Too bad. The Seniors committee had done well the last couple years, too. Looks like they’re back to square one again. Stanfel has good honors numbers (5/5/50s) but doesn’t grade out especially well in film study. Plus his short career likely makes him unelectable as has happened twice in past, and his being nominated three times wrongly suggests there are no better Senior candidates. Stabler unfortunately isn’t the worst QB HoF snub (that would be Ken Anderson), nor the most deserving Raider snub (Cliff Branch, Dave Grayson, possibly Lester Hayes). His one SB win and stat accomplishments put him about level with guys like Joe Theismann and Charlie Conerly, neither of whom anybody’s beating the doors down to elect. It’s also unclear why he became so ineffective late in his career (things like point shaving have been suggested in past, which if true would be an on-field issue and a problem). It’s almost as if they picked the two guys who just died and decided to nominate them. There were so many better options out there.

As a Bronco fan, I have to agree, Stabler was a unique competitor who helped define the Raiders at that time, he deserves a place in the hall, especially when average players like Bettis get in because of the team the play for and he happened to be average over a long period of time(giving him bloated stats, and Peter King loves him). It is a shame that the Hall has limits on how many people can get in every year, it’s the stupid biased sportswriters who block many players who belong.

How come the Broncos, one of the most successful franchises since 1977, have only 4 people in the hall? There are several deserving players that are not in(Gradishar, Atwater, Mecklenburg etc) but since they don’t play in NY, Dallas, Pittsburgh etc.